For the love of BEER BOOBS!

Getting a boost from my family at the hospital! My mom took this photo and carried the brunt of taking care of the kids for the last two weeks of school. I can never thank her enough!

Do you ever feel like the Universe is conking you over the head trying to teach you the most important of life’s lessons? Well, I must have a thick skull because the Universe came whack-a-moling my way again! I’ve had the trifecta of death scrapes...Cancer, being stuck by lightening, and now one of those antibiotic-resistant, scary-as-hell, hospital-borne bacteria that have their way with your body. WTH?!?! What lesson am I missing, I wonder. I know all about how precious every moment we have here on this earth is. I know about enjoying life with your family and friends and raising your kids right, and just loving them. And don’t ever use the phrase “It’s not personal,” because gosh darnit, YES it is personal. We are human beings and being personal is what makes us who we are as a species. It is difficult to live by these codes every single moment because sometimes you just have to be a hard ass (that doesn’t mean it’s ok to be cruel) or get some shit done, but when I can, I try to live up to the secrets of life I thought I felt in tune with after my first two major death-defying life experiences.

But here I am, rubbing my head again and wondering what in the world am I missing. What an interesting journey I’ve been on since May 17 all stemming from Breast Cancer...the gift that keeps on giving. May 17th is the day I went in for a “re-reconstruction.” And here’s where I flashback like SNL’s Wayne and Garth, so put your hands up and wave them around with me (WOOLOOLOOLOO):

In January 2014, I wrote a blog post called “Never Say Never” (http://breastofbothworlds.blogspot.com/2014/01/never-say-never.html?m=1) in which I enumerated several big “NEVERS” I swore I would not renege on but later had to eat my own words. One was that I would NEVER get breast IMPLANTS and the other is that I would NEVER get a TATTOO. Turns out I should have stuck to my guns on both those items.

The breast implants were not the right choice for me. They were hard and unyielding. They stretched my pectoral muscles unnaturally over the implants and made it painful to do the things I loved the most like tennis, golf, swimming, and resistance work. Before I had that procedure, my plastic surgeon in Kentucky assured me the implants and stretched pectorals would have no impact on my favorite activities. The healthcare field is finding this is not the case at all and that very active women who chose silicone implant reconstruction need to be aware of the limitations this reconstruction can cause in some cases. This tightness made my chest hurt all the time and I dared not breathe too deeply. Not to mention, aesthetically, the reconstruction was sub-par...I even had a third mini-boob. I could never wear a sheer top for all the lumps and bumps and scars on those babies. They held up a tshirt OK, but they just didn’t even look like breasts underneath the shirt. None of the doctors I had seen since were happy with the results which solidified my feelings that I could not live with those awful things for long. The nipple tattoos never fully took on the thin, traumatized skin and I was missing large pieces of the pie. And I won’t even start about the Auxiliary Webbing or “cording” other than to offer a brief explanation for others going through this: with so much trauma from the mastectomy, lymph node removal, radiation and the presence of a man-made product placed in my chest: actual cords of protest grew from the implants all the way down to my wrists at times with tiny tendrils that would anchor in my blood vessels all the length. It took countless and extremely painful sessions over two years to break them up and keep them at bay as much as possible. I felt like a puppet with these cords running down my arms and when we would break them up, I’d have trails of blood dots down my arms where the vessels ruptured.

So, in short for me, IMPLANTS=BAD...of course this was my experience. So many other women have perfectly fine results but my body does not like silicone or any other foreign objects riveted into my chest.

Snap back to Wednesday, May 17, 2017, the day of my re-reconstruction at the gorgeous UT Southwestern Clements Hospital in Dallas. It was an extremely complicated and tough surgery that took somewhere around 10 hours. During this time, an entire team of surgeons and residents removed the implants, harvested tissue and blood supply from my abdomen, and crafted a new set of ta-tas micro-surgically out of my very own self. My doctor said the procedure would take 24 hours for him to do on his own so they have to perform it with a team. I was glad there was finally a good use for that “extra belly structure” I have always had since the day I was born no matter what level of fitness I happened to be at (by the way, thanks everyone who generously offered to donate to the cause!). I made it through the surgery fine and remained in the ICU for the next two days to closely monitor the blood flow they meticulously constructed in my new breasts and watch for clots. I had four drain lines coming out of my body which I also needed help tending to until I was more mobile. To be honest, I don’t remember any of that time. Friday they moved me to a regular room because all looked well. Saturday they sent me home even though I truly didn’t feel like I was coherent enough to take care of myself, still, I wanted to get home to see my kids.

By the next day, I knew something was afoot. My throat hurt much worse than just the typical scratchiness of being intubated and I could do very little other than sleep due to the dizziness and nausea. By Monday morning, my throat looked like nothing I’ve ever seen before in all my years of looking at my sick childrens’ throats and I felt worse overall, not better. Not to mention, one of my drain lines looked like it was becoming infected. I almost fainted in the shower and had to muster every bit of strength to keep my legs under me. I was not going to have an emergency team pull me out of the shower. My dignity has taken many blows but I was not willing to let that happen, and I was NOT going to stress my mom out like that who was the only one home with me at the time. I saw my doctor’s nurse the next day and she noticed the abdominal incision that goes from hip to hip was turning red. She prescribed relatively strong antibiotics and sent me home until my doctor’s follow-up appointment on Thursday. Certainly, the antibiotics would do the trick and I’d feel better when I came back just two days later. That didn’t happen and I continued to slide. Everything got worse. We agreed I needed to be admitted back into the hospital and find out what was going on. By then all I could really do is sit with my eyes closed, and I could feel myself slipping into a place I was not about to go willingly. I was never so happy to be in a hospital bed.

I needed IV antibiotics and fluid STAT. I was severely dehydrated and was down 20 pounds from just a week ago. All the water I had been drinking at home was ineffective in staying hydrated because my body just wasn’t absorbing it. Now the problem was that there were no veins to put an IV in. The only small ones I had were tapped too many times that day for blood draws and they were too small anyway for the caustic antibiotic they were attempting to give me. My entire left arm is off limits because of the cancerous lymph node removal I had in 2014 which caused lymphedema so that removes IV options all the more. Three nurses each tried twice to start an IV but to no avail. They finally called in their VAT team that uses a sonogram to find deeper veins. The first found nothing and deferred later to another team. They finally found one deep in my upper arm. It took 8 hours from the time I was admitted until they could finally start to pump the antibiotics and fluids into me. I was told that night, the hospital changed their VAT procedures because of the unacceptable delay and 12 sticks over the course of 8 hours is just too much for anyone to endure.

All should have been well at that point and I should have started feeling better. But I only got worse and the infection started to spread along the entire abdominal incision. I  was leaking like a human sprinkler out of the holes in my hip where then infected drain lines had been removed and also all along the incision. This is when it started getting dicey for the next two days. The Infections Disease Team (ID) was called in to take over the administration of the antibiotics. The caustic Vancomycin had no effect on the infection and only caused me to blow out three veins meaning more late night VAT team visits and even an ER visit to place more deep IV lines.

That meant the two antibiotics I had taken that should have dealt with the infection handily had failed. I have been allergic to penicillin all my life as my mother was before me and as are all my kids. No one dares prescribe me penicillin-based antibiotics, but the ID team felt the two penicillin-family antibiotics I had to have to fight the infection were enough generations away from the original penicillin that it was worth the risk of an allergic reaction. Thank goodness they made the right call. I was watched like a hawk during those first infusions and given Benedryl to help counteract any mild reactions. It still took three more days to start seeing improvement partly because I had some overzealous taping nurses who put copious amounts of tape all over my infected skin to hold gauze in place to catch all the leaks I had sprung. The constant ripping of tape on that red and angry skin just traumatized the area all the more and helped it spread beyond the incision area. My family and friends were worried sick, and I have to admit this one scared me, as well. I had been admitted on a Thursday and it wasn’t until the next Tuesday that I started feeling a bit better and the infection started heading in the right direction. They let me out of the hospital on that next Thursday when I was up moving around pretty good, cleaning my room with sterilizing wipes, walking as far away as I could get outside the hospital, and MacGyvering things I needed out of limited hospital resources...like a new system of abdominal dressing that requires no tape and that I could change myself, a mini cooler made out of styrofoam cups and tape to keep my protein shakes cold that I was supposed to be pounding all day, and other fun ideas that kept my brain turning once I got to feeling better. My kids, my mom and Scott all came up for a visit on the weekend I was there, but I missed them all terribly and it was time to get home.

The ID team never got the uncompromised bacterial culture they wanted but they felt I was dealing with both a staph and a strep infection and it would be a long road until I am fully out from underneath them. They will be watching me very closely for the next month as I continue an oral form of one of the penicillin-based antibiotics I had in the hospital. My doctor says it will be four months before I feel really good...I’m looking to cut that timeline at least in half!

In the end, my ego is not inflated enough to believe the Universe is trying to tell me something in particular. Life continues to be good to me, and I am beyond thankful for the gifts I have been afforded. There are so many more people in this world who are facing challenges I cannot even fathom. They do not have the support or resources I have been afforded. I truly have the best family and friends to share this life’s journey with, and I could feel all those strong good vibes, prayers and well wishes you’ve been sending my way lifting me once again. Many do not live in the United States where we have so many freedoms, privileges, resources and healthcare insurance options available to us that even some of our own citizens cannot understand how protected and fortunate they are to be a part of our great country.

I will continue to take the conks on the head that life tends to throw the way of every living, breathing human being and try to become a better person for having dealt with the adversity. I know that in the percentages game, I tend to run on the shy side of the statistics so it’s no longer a surprise when the improbable happens. Every time I have faced something difficult, I come out on the other side with a greater life lesson learned that makes me see how precious our days are. There are almost always bonuses if you’re able to make it through. This time, I get to live out my days with a comfortable set of mighty fine-shaped boobs...or at least I will after the next two required rounds of surgery to complete them. Once that’s done, I will never have to have surgery on them again. Even beyond that, since they are made of my own skin, fat, vessels and tissue, they will grow and contract like a real set of ta-tas are supposed to as my weight fluctuates. That means, instead of getting a beer belly from enjoying our awesome, local, hand-crafted Shannon brewery around the corner, I will get beer boobs and, gosh, I think that’s a pretty cool thing.

Ironic that as I'm healing from my beer boobs debacle, one of my hospital rooms overlooked the Dallas Budweiser Distribution Center.

P.S. I can't let this opportunity to go by without thanking my amazing new tribe of neighbors who we are so blessed to have found in Keller. In alpha order, THANK YOU the Garbers, the Mitrys, the Simontons and the Terrells for taxiing the kids to and from school, making meals, delivering donuts, and checking in on my sweet mom to make sure she had all the support she needed while I was in and out of the hospital. I love you all dearly! Garbers, we miss you already but know you will have such fantastic adventures in Salt Lake City.

P.S.S. If you've made it this far, congratulations and thank you for listening to all that tedious detail. It always helps me process what's going on in this world, when I can write about it...and I haven't written in a very long time. Facebook can be both a blessing and a curse sometimes, but on days like today, it reminds me of how far I have come. This photo was taken 3 years ago on this day and appeared on Facebook today as a memory. Seeing it brings back so many emotions and thoughts for me.